Thursday, March 11, 2010

Johnny Easy's P.O.V.

Our esteemed star, Braeden McDonald, reflects on the crazy ride that made up "Johnny Easy and the Student Affair."

"So we finally finished filming after about 4 months. When I initially accepted the role of Johnny, Maggie told me that we would be done by Christmas break. Needless to say I am pretty disgusted with the way everything was run the whole time...... I’m just playin!!! I’m not really mad. It was actually VERY fun and I’m kind of sad that we are finished, but I spent the whole last week crying alone in my room every night, so I think I've gotten the sadness out of my system now.

I guess we are just going to have to make a sequel, but I’m only gonna sign on to do it if I get a shirtless scene where I’m rescuing a mother and her baby from a burning building. I feel like I’ve earned it.

I remember first hearing about the movie and audition and stuff at the KBVR practicum meeting at the beginning of fall term. I thought it would be fun so I prayed about it and God told me to do it and that I was going to get the lead role. I was like, “I don’t know about that,” but long story short, I followed through with it and got the role like a month later and was pretty excited. I learned so much through this whole adventure of making a full length movie. I had never done any sort of acting before (aside from the role of “storyteller #2” in my 4th grade school play, which I NAILED by the way) so this was completely new to me. I like to think that I improved a lot from beginning to end.

The first day on set, before I really knew anyone, I was kind of shy and just out of my element, but then I got to know everyone better and it made it a lot easier to just have fun with it and be the more outspoken me that I like to be. The whole atmosphere made it really easy to shoot and act and all that. I think the best thing I can take away from the whole experience is the relationships that I’ve been able to make with all the cast and crew. Now, when I walk into KBVR, I actually have friends and even major connections (shout out to Maggie). I love it.

A lot has happened during shooting...I’ve had my weekends stolen away; I’ve been literally physically punched in the mouth twice; I’ve been slapped like 50 times; I’ve had to constantly endure Olivia’s annoying Australian accent; and I’ve probably sung about a million songs and lobbied that we change the movie into a musical at least 50 times all to no avail. I would estimate that I probably spent a solid 200+ hours working on this movie throughout the last 4 months and, to be real, there were times when I just lost my swagger and didn’t have the energy anymore. When I look back on it though, I had so much fun shooting this movie and it has opened up so many doors for me that I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it, unless I could somehow get that shirtless scene somehow mixed in, but that’s the ONLY thing I would change.

I could seriously sit here writing a novel or manifesto about all the ups and downs of filming for the next 15 hours, but I’m not going to because I have other things to do, haha. I guess the last thing I’ll say is that I’m super-pumped to see the final product and that I’m unspeakably thankful that I got to be a part of this whole thing and I love everyone involved."